Oklo has acquired Atomic Alchemy, a U.S. agency specializing in high-value radioisotopes, in a $25 million all-stock transaction. The acquisition will add radioisotope manufacturing capabilities to Oklo’s superior reactor and gas recycling operations, creating a brand new income stream and strengthening the resilience of the isotope provide chain, the corporate mentioned.
Radioisotopes, unstable atoms with extra power of their nuclei, are important throughout drugs, trade, and analysis. In healthcare, they drive nuclear imaging and most cancers therapy. Technetium-99m, produced from molybdenum-99, is extensively used for detailed diagnostic scans, whereas iodine-131 is employed in treating thyroid most cancers. In trade, radioisotopes have important security and high quality assurance purposes to, for instance, allow non-destructive testing strategies equivalent to detecting structural flaws in jet engine parts and exactly measuring materials thickness.
Nonetheless, as a result of they’re produced by neutron or proton bombardment in reactors or cyclotrons, radioisotopes are difficult to supply, usually have quick half-lives, and want specialised amenities to satisfy excessive and various calls for. Presently, most radioisotopes depend on a small variety of growing older reactors, such because the Excessive Flux Reactor within the Netherlands and the BR2 reactor in Belgium. Whereas these reactors, together with a restricted community of different amenities, kind the spine of world radioisotope manufacturing, they’re nearing the top of their operational lifespans, with many dealing with license expirations by 2030, in line with the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company (IAEA).
Provide challenges right now are compounded by a reliance on worldwide reactors that face frequent upkeep delays and sudden shutdowns, which, within the U.S., have spurred a scarcity that leaves the nation depending on overseas sources. A wave of private-sector corporations has just lately stepped in to fill important provide gaps available in the market. Based on the IAEA, the radiopharmaceutical market, particularly, valued at $5.5 billion in 2022, is projected to double by 2030. The company suggests greater than 150 corporations are presently creating diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals.
A New Income Stream for Quick-Reactor Developer Oklo
For Oklo, the market presents a profitable new market by way of which it could leverage its applied sciences’ distinctive attributes. Oklo’s enterprise mannequin facilities on deploying its liquid metal-cooled sodium quick reactor know-how in three reactor sizes (15 MW to 100 MW). The corporate says it’s fielding a big mission pipeline that features letters of intent (LOIs) for about 2,100 MW in devoted energy throughout a number of sectors. Earlier this week, the corporate mentioned it signed LOIs with two (unnamed) main information heart suppliers for as much as 750 MW. Amongst its already publicized initiatives is a pre-agreement to obtain as much as 500 MW with information heart agency Equinix, a 50-MW partnership with oil and gasoline agency Diamondback Vitality within the Permian Basin, a 100-MW dedication to Wyoming Hyperscale’s information heart campus, a possible micro-reactor pilot at Alaska’s Eielson Air Power Base, and new business crops in Southern Ohio.
For Oklo, nonetheless, one other core ambition is to leverage gas recycling to reinforce its enterprise mannequin economics. “Quick reactors have the distinctive potential to recycle used gas, and we’ve been actively pursuing this to diversify our gas provides and capitalize on the advantages of gas recycling,” defined Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte throughout the firm’s second-quarter earnings name in August.
The corporate has made substantial headway in demonstrating its pyroprocessing know-how, together with a profitable end-to-end recycling course of with Argonne Nationwide Laboratory in July. Progress is in the meantime ongoing to additional Oklo’s Aurora Gasoline Fabrication Facility at Idaho Nationwide Laboratory. The fabrication facility will fabricate gas for Oklo’s first business powerhouse—anticipated to be deployed in 2027—utilizing high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) sourced from from the previous EBR-II reactor.
Basically, Oklo’s pyroprocessing course of will contain changing spent nuclear gas from mild water reactors (which is within the type of ceramic oxide) first to a metallic kind. That preliminary preparation step removes the oxygen and prepares the gas for the electrochemical separation. The metallic spent gas is then positioned within the molten salt surroundings, to which {an electrical} present is utilized. This electrorefining course of selectively separates the totally different parts of the spent gas, together with the uranium, transuranic parts (equivalent to plutonium and minor actinides), and fission merchandise, together with a variety of radioisotopes.
Oklo has been investigating the potential to reap these helpful radioisotopes by way of a strategic partnership with Idaho-based Atomic Alchemy, first introduced in Could. “Our partnership entails work on utilizing the quick neutrons we produce for radioisotope manufacturing, in addition to partnering with them to course of co-products from the recycling facility that may be packaged and bought into varied industrial, medical, and different markets,” DeWitte mentioned.
A Range of Byproducts
Atomic Alchemy, a small firm based in 2018, has to date been working to handle radioisotope shortages by way of its proprietary Versatile Isotope Manufacturing Reactor (VIPR). The reactor’s design emphasizes effectivity and scalability, which might show pivotal in addressing persistent shortages, the corporate says.
VIPR is able to producing greater than 40 economically helpful isotopes with minimal operational prices, it notes. These embody actinium-225, which is usually used for focused most cancers therapies, strontium-89 for bone most cancers ache aid, and ytterbium-176, which is transformed to lutetium-177 for treating neuroendocrine tumors and prostate most cancers. As well as, it might produce strontium-90, which serves as a warmth supply in radioisotope thermoelectric mills (RTGs) for spacecraft, and plutonium-238, which may very well be integral to energizing long-duration house missions. Serving the clear power, industrial, and protection entrance, the reactor might produce tritium, important for nuclear weapons upkeep and fusion analysis, and cobalt-60 used extensively in sterilization and radiography.
Atomic Alchemy’s applied sciences, pivotally, can even carry out neutron transmutation doping of silicon (NTD), which is “thought-about a ‘gold-standard’ course of that makes use of the neutrons produced in a nuclear reactor to transform among the silicon atoms into phosphorus through nuclear transmutation,” Oklo famous.
“We consider NTD presents a superior technique for semiconductor doping as a result of a whole ingot could be doped previous to wafering; the dopant is distributed uniformly all through the ingot; massive volumes of semiconductor materials could be irradiated in batches; the method can be utilized on multiple kind of semiconductor; and NTD permits for fine-tuning the quantity of dopant added,” it mentioned. “Given the present excessive degree of demand for state-of-the-art semiconductors, we consider NTD capabilities could also be transformative to the semiconductor trade.”
Oklo mentioned the enterprise worth of the acquisition reinforces its place as a “leader in superior nuclear know-how, combining power manufacturing and significant materials provides right into a unified, high-value creation method.”
It successfully expands Oklo’s “enterprise and market attain” into new sectors, together with biotech, prescribed drugs, house, protection, and semiconductors. “Oklo expects to start producing income from radioisotope manufacturing following the proposed acquisition, with preliminary revenues anticipated previous to finishing the primary radioisotope manufacturing reactors,” it famous.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
